


Theta Nix

by ansley15



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansley15/pseuds/ansley15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: After Spock is killed on a mission to a planet run by time-altering aliens, Kirk stops at nothing to bring back the man he has just realized he has feelings for. But Kirk, of all people, should know a Captain cannot cheat death...</p><p>A Story in 4 parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: MAJOR CHARACTER death (but not necessiarly a permanent one..see summary), gore, violence, slash, language, references to futuristic drug use (but not by any character in Star Fleet.)Do not read unless you are prepared for ANGST. You have been warned.

Part I:

“Then not only did you violate the rules, you also failed to understand the principle lesson.”

“Please. Enlighten me.”

“You of all people should know, Cadet Kirk: a captain cannot cheat death.”

()()()

 

James T. Kirk never thought he would live to see the day a new planet's discovery didn't rock him like revolution.

But he had seen much he never thought he'd live to.

“Captain, receiving no transmissions on any station,” Uhura swivled around briskly at her monitor, her sleek ponytail snapping behind her like a whip.

“My scanners read massive amounts of biomass, but we are not picking up any sign of technology, sir. If there is intelligent life on the planet, then it has not yet reached Stage 3...”

“Thank you, Commander Iyengar,” Jim cut off the flat not-voice from the science station without as much as an over-shoulder glance. “Lt. Uhura, page Dr. McCoy. Tell him to prepare to send one of his medics down to the planet. Commander Iyengar, prepare to beam down with four of your personal. Three biologists, one geologist. Report to Lt. Kyle in the transporter room.”  
“Will you not be beaming down with the landing party, sir?” Uhura's sole voice piped up above the muffled chorus of “ayes.” Her brow knitted in concern.

“Lt. Uhura, I don't remember giving you permission to question every order I make,” Jim's forced non-chalant tone barely belied a snap. He did not meet her gaze but felt it prickle his skin. Nomally, the mingled worry and anger ablaze in her face as she tensed would have stirred him. But her eyes...the footsteps clopping across the bridge...these gleaming lights richoetteing off metal in rainbow-laced fragments...the pattering of Chekhov's fingetips on a keyboard sharp through the usual humming buzz of the bridge...

All of this smeared indistinct as a lucid dream.

It had been two weeks today.

 

()()()  
“Two weeks from today,” Jim strutted jauntily down the Enterprise hallway, flanked by Spock and McCoy. “The planet of Theta Nix will be relieved of its narcotics problem. Mark my words.”

“Narcotic addiction,” McCoy grumbled caustically, puffiing slightly to keep up. “I understand why the abuse of Substance N is such a big deal..it's highly addictive and triggers apathy and lethargic behavior. Not to mention it makes a person's brain look like a mass of burnt swiss cheese if you use it too long. But why is the Federation getting involved? Doesn't this seem like a job for local police?”

Jim started to answer, but was cut off smoothly by Spock who glided a pace in front of McCoy, in perfect stride with Jim on his right.

“Doctor, once again, you focus too intensely upon the details and overlook the larger picture. Substance N is a synthetic compound manufactered by the Ferengi. While there is yet no conclusive evidence that some Ferengi organizations may be in alliance with the Klingons, it is possible that some of the profits from illegal Substance N trafficking may be funding the Klingon empire.”

“And besides, Bones,” added Jim, apuff with a special pride he never knew until the day he first saw the Enterprise shine. “The colony of Theta Nix is a small, developing colony. They are overwhelmed by the problem facing them, and it's our job to protect all the Federation citizens on that outpost from all threats. Including themselves.”

McCoy cocked an eyebrow rivaling Spock's, eyeballing Jim suspiciously as the threesome burst into the transporter room. The doctor paused at the door, folding his arms slowly across his chest.

“You seem to be in an awfully good mood for someone who's about to go on a mission where you can't possibly break every Star Fleet regulation in the book.”

“Well,” Jim brightly remarked. “It's important work that we are doing, helping this struggling colony, promoting good behavior amongs the masses...”

“..and you are eager to complete several missions which are, as you humans would say, ”milkruns” until Admiral Komack forgives you for the Rigel incident,” Spock supplied flatly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with warmth.

“Yeah. That too.”

Kirk had a knack for making Bones's veins thicken, matched only by his ability to loosen those veins with a boyish grin.

“We'll be fine, Bones,” he reassured his old friend, smacking him on the shoulder as he passed. “It's a boring, calm old diplomatic meeting thing. You'd be bored out of your skull. It'll just be a bunch of old politicians talking.There are no jungles or wild fires or posion here.”

“I dunno, Jim,” a twinge of humor trickled through McCoy's crusty demeanor. The corner of his lips twitched from where he hovered on the other side of the room, scowling good-naturedly at the command team as Jim and Spock took their places on the pad. “Remember that Serenian Ambassador?”

Jim threw his hands up in defense, all too-innocent eyes and barely-stiffened smirk likening him more to a schoolboy caught staring up his teacher's skirt than the captain of a starship.

“Hey. Not fair. Kissing is how they “shake hands” on that planet, I was being polite. It was a wound inflicted in the line of duty. It wasn't like I decided to star part time in “Kinky Captain Serenian Posion Porn”..”

“I admit myself somewhat disturbed by the swiftness with which you “invented” that pornography title, Captain” snarked Spock dryly, unable to still a mischevious wiggle of his eyebrow. His fine-boned face was composed precisely blank, but his dark eyes were bright with a mirth Jim loved to coax out. A soft, subtle smile tugged at Jim's lips.

“Nah, that's Bones's department. How do you think he paid his way through med school?” Jim teased McCoy, though his bright eyes never flitted from Spock's. The doctor rolled his eyes.

“Good God, man. Get a room, you two.”

“Love you too, Bones,” Kirk winked. He gravened quickly, muttering to Spock seconds before both men were reduced to scattered molecules. “Did you complete the background research on the societal norms of the Thetans?”

“But of course, Captain,” Spock responded with an incredulous, mechanical little head tilt, as if mildly offended Jim even needed to ask. Jim chortled softly to himself.

“Ah, Mr. Spock,” Jim smiled soflty. “What I would do without you, I'll never know.”

()()()

 

“Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a grief couselor...”

“Good. I don't need a therapist. I don't need anyone trying to get up in my head and project all of their own issues onto my supposed ones.”

“Will you let me finish before you jump down my throat? What I'm trying to say is, I know what you are going through...and quite frankly, I don't know what to tell you, Jim.”

“Then why are you even talking to me? I have a goddam ship to run, Bones.”

“Jim, you and I have been through too much shit over the years for me to be shaken off that easily. You know I'm on your side, kid.”

(pause.)

“I'm sorry, Bones.”

“Look-it's rough. I know it is. But you know that Komack and McArthur and those other pompous bureacratic sonofbitch vultures have been waiting for years to nail you on something, and there is a lot of talk going around the grapevine that you've been emotionally compromised...”

“Let them talk. I don't care.”

“Do you care about anything these days?”

(pause)

“Of course I do.”

“Say it like you mean it, Jim, because if you keep acting like this,... I'm going to start to think you are emotionally compromised my ownself...”

“Acting like what exactly?”

“Like the fact that you've stopped beaming down with landing parties. Like the fact that you work every single shift and never let Uhura or Sulu or even Scotty take the conn if at all possible. Like the fact that you are actually doing all your own paperwork now...you never do your own paperwork...”

“Well, I don't have a First Officer who can do it all for me in about a minute anymore, do I?”

“Good God, Jim, don't do that. I...I...cared too...I do mis-”

“And I don't see what actually following regulations for a change has to do with...”

“But don't you see, you're not dealing with this! You're burying yourself in your work to cope, and you are working yourself to death as a result! And it's not just that, you're...you're just out of it, like you are dead to the world. And if you need to be out of it, then by all means, there's no sin in that. Deal with what happened anyway you can. But take some time off. Let Uhura or Sulu take the conn for a few days. They can handle it. And even if it's a blow to your pride..and God knows I know all about that pride of yours... if you are actually emotionally compromised, take some shore leave. God knows you've accumulated enough...”

“I'm not abandoing my crew.”

“No one says you ar...”

“I'm not. Fucking. Walking. Out.”

“Is this what this is about? Is it that you feel abandoned, or betrayed, because-”

“Jesus Christ, will you stop trying to get inside my head? You have no idea what I'm going throug-”

“I would if you'd just tell me! You aren't being...don't make me say it...you're not being...logical...”

“Will you shut the FUCK up?”

()()()

Though Theta Nix was inhabited by colonists from many planets (included a hundred-odd humans), the ruling class was dominated by the Thetans. The Thetans were a lizardlike people (Jim was reminded, with a shudder, of the Gorn) with thick dark teal scales crusting every inch of their compact, roundish bodies save their soap-soft hands,unshoed feet, and their fleshy, poutmouthed lips. A cluster waited in the room where Jim and Spock materialized, all less than a meter tall, drapped in feathery yellow-orange robes and resembling blue-cored daffodils. Jim picked out the leader instantly: the one drapped in the thickest robe, whose pot-belly stretched the farthest.

“Greetings, Captain Kirk,” the alien spread his tiny blue-palmed hands in a priestly gesture. “I am Prime Minister Klor, this is my assistant, Roltz, and my wife...Kirana. I am attended by several of my heads of state, whose names and backgrounds I am willing to give if needed for security purposes.”

Jim tried clumsily to mimic the Prime Minister's hand gesture, failing miserably.

“No validation is necessary. We have already checked out your personnel from our ship. I am Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, representing the Federation. This is my first officer, Mr. Spock.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaitance,” Spock entoned, forming perfectly the gesture Jim had so badly botched. Jim could have sworn Spock's mouth thinned in amusement.

“The pleasure is ours. Welcome to our colony,” pipped up the assistant Roltz. He was a candid-eyed little lizard staring up at them with earnest softness, as if as much as a frown in his direction would cause him to cry.

Jim and Spock were gestured towards a pair of seats, but both chose to remain standing, as the chairs appeared so small and rickety as to snap were they to sit.

“So, I understand that there is a bit of a drug trafficking problem in this colony.” Jim delved straight into meat of the matter. The Prime Minister nodded fervantly.

“Yes, Captain. There has been a spike in Substance N usage over the last few months, and it is halting the progress of our civilization. You see, Captain, Substance N users become very lazy. They are content and happy to do little but hold hands and babble about sweet voices in their heads, speak of their hope for the future...all total nonsense.”

“Are they violent in any way?” Jim asked seriously.

“Not usually, Captain. Quite the opposite in fact...they are incredibly gentle, speaking often of unconditional love and kindness...until you try to convince them that the hallucinations that they suffer are not reality. Then some of them become quite violent indeed.”

“The drug induces a numb, detatched state not entirely unlike your Earth's opium-based drugs, Captain,” Spock supplied swifly. “However, unlike opium-based drugs, Substance N lacks a certain potency. The user is less likely to die of an overdose than to slowly, surely fade away. They are also less likely to realize the gravity of their situation. After a certain amount of time, they become so delusional they can no longer separate reality from fiction. They also are unable to realize they are dying, for one of the most common delusions of Substance N users is that they will live forever.”

“Precisely,” the Prime Minister's yellow cat-slit eyes glazed in concentration. The muscles in his scaly jaws bunched and relaxed. Smoothly, he drew a tiny device from his pocket and pressed down a button. The outline of a molecule was suspended suddenly before them.

“This is the structure of a Substance N molecule,” the Prime Minister told them. “The clear, odorless, tasteless substance is usually taken intraveniously, but not always.”

The snowflake-diagram blipped out, replaced by the image of a pig-eyed alien; its papery-skinned ridges cresting a wide, monkeyish head.

“This is Tholkar, the Ferengi trader who has been linked as an ally of the Klingon empire.”

“Tholkar is an outspoken opponent of the Federation,” Spock whispered in Jim's ear. The two men leaned instinctively closer, their foreheads nearly brushing. “He believes that the Federation is a socialist state undermining economic prosperity, and that the more harsh, unfettered Klingon government is more welcoming to commerce.”

Jim nodded while the Prime Minister warbled on as if Spock had not spoken.

“...though neither Tholkar nor any of his known associates have been spotted on the planet, law enforcement has confiscated several weapons and other goods matching the description and serial numbers of cargo on a ship registered to Tholkar.”

“So you have proof he is dealing phasers and legal goods, and since he's been linked to Substance N trafficking in the past, you suspect that he might be the one behind your planet's problem?” Jim deduced shrewdly. The Prime Minister nodded again.

“Precisely, Captain.”

“Tell you what, Minister,” Jim placed his hands authoritatively on his hips, brow furrowed, clear and alive with the focused energy that command never failed to strike in him. “If it is alright with you, I would like to look over the documents and information your law enforcement has collected on the products. If we can establish proof that Tholkar is responsible for the trafficking, the Federation will be able to authorize an intense search of the planet. Otherwise, legally, we will be unable to help you. I'm sure you understand that there must be a warrant issued for a suspect's arrest, that we cannot simply send personal barging randomnly through houses seaching for Substance N.”

“Of course, Captain. Roltz!” The Prime Minister barked at his assistant and sharply clapped his hands twice. The assistant flinched. “Fetch Captain Kirk the documents he has requested!”

“Yes, Minister!” squaked Roltz, his broad tail causing him to waddle slightly on his fat-thighed, double-kneed legs as he scurried from the room.

“Do you know if Tholkar is using the drug himself?” Jim asked the Minister.

“Unlikely. If he were, he would be caught by now.”

“Explain.”

“Substance N users,” supplied Spock once more, drawing himself to full height and clenching his hands in the small of his back as he fell into his most matter-of-fact, informative mode. “Are not among the universe's most lucid thinkers. Even the ones who are incredibly intelligent exist in a state of perpetual denial.”

“Exactly. Excuse me, Captain...”

The Prime Minister turned to his group, chattering in the shrill, chirpping Thetan language which was but gibberish to Jim's ears. Pity he had not brought Uhura...

“I have never understood,” Spock confided quietly in Jim while several of the other Thetans scuttled from the room. “How a sentient being...fully aware of their own mortality...can so easily fall into denial.”

“You are talking about the delusions of the N users?”

“Precisely. It is illogical to choose to believe a scenario based not upon plausibility, but upon whether or not the scenario is pleasant.”

“You're right. It isn't logical, but you would be surprised to find, my friend, that nothing is more addictive than hope.”

 

 

()()()  
Twin points pressed behind Jim's temples. Another exhaustion headache was coming on. A slow, churnning rage, tense as gravity, stirred constantly in his chest, sucking from him all the energy he would otherwise devote to living. In this haze of perpetual weariness, his neurorsis reached a stage of torture where as to shield him from reality. Reality was cruel and strange. His dreams left him screaming his throat raw.

He had refused to drink at the wake, scared he would drink heavily, think heavily, say heavy things and reveal too much. Years ago, he would have gotten so drunk the Riverside bar floor would have stamped its pattern unto his drool-slimmed cheek. But Jim was not that kind of person anymore. No; he took a certain vicious, masochistic pride in standing, fists clenched, while the others around him cried. Knowing Uhura would end up warbeling in an even-more-wasted Scotty's arms by midnight, knowing Chekhov would take more than his tiny frame could handle, knowing Bones would hit the bottle harder than he did on Joanna's birthday or his anniversary. Jim, on the other hand, bore the world in stubborn pride, with a compsure worthy of a Vulcan.

It felt almost illict to enjoy anything, even alchohol. He still felt guilty, too, even two weeks later, when work would draw his mind from Theta Nix. Sometimes he'd even be on the verge of a smile or even a laugh, because of something Scott or Sulu said. Then he'd remember. Awash in guilt, he'd shudder; the laugh choked in his throat.

He was never wholly asleep or awake. Most nights he lay awake tossed in the vicious cycle in his thinning skull, his fried-nerved mind diseased and sick of thinking the same thoughts on repeat. When he did sleep without nightmare, he woke unrefreshed and peered out bitter-eyed at the world.

His crew ached too. He could see it in their eyes. He found it hard to care. The day after it happened, a crewmember had been killed in a transporter accident. Normally, a crewmember's death left him melancholy. Yet this time he stared at that twitching splatter of matter oozing dark red unto the transporter, as dully awed as when watching the showers run, or the watching the replicators drizzle coffee sludge into his cup.

Life goes on.

The closest he came to feeling (besides those nights breathing cracked his ribs) was irritation at his command team, especially Bones and Uhura. His crew was talking about him. He knew it. Just because he knew he was paranoid didn't mean his spine didn't ice at the whispers lingering on the edge of his hearing range, when Sulu and Chekhov fell abruptly silent upon his entrance to a room. Uhura's doe stare set rage hot and sick in his gut.

Don't you dare pity me.

They must never know, a sleep-deprived wail shrieked hysteric. He was the Captain. He was a role model for the crew. He was in charge. None of them, not even Bones, could see beneath this title that first made him realize that he could own and love his name, that it owned him as much as he owned it. It was all he had to force him to drag his weary bones to the bridge each shift.

Besides, only one person had ever been able to truly see the ugly and lovely tendons beneath the skin, see the full man behind the Captain. Letting anyone else in would be blasphemy.

 

()()()

“How long has this colony been here?” Jim directed the question towards Spock, though it was the Prime Minister who answered.

“10 years, Captain Kirk.”

“Impressive,” Jim nodded decisively as the party of six-the Prime Minister, his wife, 2 bodyguards, and Jim and Spock-squeezed their way through narrow-cut streets. The streets were slit channels cut in stone blocks through which a hot gritty wind zipped. The pot-hole windows of a thousands apartments dotted up the stone walls like the many eyes of Argus staring blindly from the peacock's tail. Security had gone before them, purging the streets of all common folk. On one street corner, a cleaning robot still buzzed frantically to obliterate a graffiti mark which, in its half-melted state, resembled a leper's blotch. The Prime Minister's fat eyes narrowed, but he said nothing until Jim asked.

“My rule,” the Prime Minister explained “Is under some contestation. Because of the Substance N situation.”

“I thought that the users were non-violent unless you tried to convince them their hallucinations weren't real?”

Yet again, it was Spock who answered. “Not the users, captain. The dealers. They can be incredibly nonplussed at anyone who undermines their power.”

“An understatement, my Vulcan friend, but true in essence.”

“Prime Minister,” Spock stared fixedly at the lizard as they walked, possessed in that intense, fierce intellectual curiousity which always coaxed a smile from Jim. “There is much talk amongst scientists about the time-altering legends of your homeworld. Can you divulge any information about such things?”

“Oh yes, the time travel,” the Minister's fishy lips flexed in what Jim recognized as mild embarrassment. “It is not a legend, Mr. Spock, there is indeed a way in which our people have been able to alter time...but we do not speak of it. It has not been done for many centuries.”

“Time travel? Aren't we a little old to believe in that kind of thing?” Jim laughed nervously, his inside joke with Spock not quite masking the unease unsetting his gut.

“This time travel would not create an alternate reality, Captain,” Spock leaned close, his whisper warm in Kirk's ear as they walked more tightly together, arms touching. “Thetan legends say that their people can rewind certain events, but how exactly this is done, is something of a mystery.”

“At any rate, we do not talk about it much,” the Prime Minister interrupted, having evidentally heard the entire conversation. “It was long ago decided by our people that the power to control time was too much for one or even several people to handle. However, the Chamber is maintained out of respect for tradition, and in case we should ever have dire need of it. After all, one never knows what might happen.”

That was the moment where phaser shots zinged from nowhere, sharp, hollow, and dry. The Prime Minister was missed, but the closest shot singed his robes black. The phaser was set to kill.

“Get down!” Jim shoved the Minister and his wife around the nearest corner. The two body guards whipped out their phasers as quickly as Kirk and Spock. The four curled around the street corner as well, using it as a shield, shooting off rapid fire at the single window from which the shots came.

“So much for a routine mention,” Jim quipped lightly to Spock as the bodyguards' shots zipped through the window several stories overhead. “I owe Bones five credits.”

Spock's dark eyes bored into Jim's face, bright with a look Spock saved for him alone. There was a passion in those Vulcan eyes Jim could not explain; a kind of unforgettable fire he could strike within his friend at whim, that curled like bloodfever in those dark green veins, quivered in his very marrow.

Weird, how a moment ordinary when happening can, in retrospect, become etched into your heart forever.

 

()()()

An hour after he screamed at McCoy, Jim received a comm from Commodore Pike.

Normally, a comm from Pike would have been welcome, a chance to talk to his favorite admiral. Now, however, Jim pressed the button with a current of apprehension tingling under the numb. He wondered if he was in trouble. More pressingly, he wondered if Pike was going to look at him like he had been recently.

Pike's familiar face suddenly dominated the Padd screen. The delta wrinkles at his eye corners seemed deeper of late.

“I have a new assignment for you from Star Fleet,” Pike was saying. A bright teensy corner of Jim's brain pipped Why is he messaging me in person to tell me this? Even if it were super-important-top-secret, I'd be getting it from Komack. The thought was a few shattered notes awash in a sound and fury sea.

“We need the Enterprise to return to Theta Nix.” Pike's gravely voice softened several decibles and there was a gentleness in his steely eyes bordering on apologetic. “I'm so sorry, Jim, but the situation there has gotten much worse than before. We have definite evidence that Thokalr is on the planet. He was spotted via satellite. There will be more information in the debriefing document being sent to you right now.”

An unfamiliar voice bleeped out in stillborn calm

“Understood Admiral. I will complete the mission as efficently and quickly as possible.”

Pike's face was snuffed out like a blink.

This was one of those moments, Jim later reflected, naked in the shower with a hot stream pelting his skin. This is one of those moments when I should be feeling something. Maybe it's true and I really am in what Bones likes to call 'shell shock.' Maybe I am crazy. But if craziness is disorientation from reality, and reality itself is so absurd, how can I truly know that my craziness is not a higher plane of sanity?

He would be returning to the planet where settlers, once aquiver with hope, pumped their veins with Substance N and lay with filmed eyes and vague grins.

He would be returning to the planet where the only people whose hearts beat true shot at their leader's heads.  
He would be returning to the planet....

….where they could turn back time....

 

()()()

A whisp of smoke snaked out the window. The post-shot silence quivered pregnant.

“I think the cost is clear,” Jim called out from where he squated, thighs aching, peering nervously around the corner.

From a completely different window, in a different direction, three blasts cleft the air.

The first shot soared over Jim's head, missing him by at least a meter. The second one struck the wall behind the Prime Minister's wife's shoulder, pebbling her with fractured rock.

The third hit Spock directly in the throat.

And the memory of that millisecond was a haze in Jim's mind, a haze of yelling security guards and screaming and this isn't happening it can't be happening it can't it can't it can't it can't

()()()

“Computer,” Jim's voice croaked hoarse as if from lack of use. “I need you to compile all known information...involving Thetan time travel.”

()()()

 

Spock sprawled flat on his back. Blood gurgled dark green from the wound and streamed thick out the side of his mouth, staining emerald the whites of his wide open eyes.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Super lame description of time travel ahead. It's really just as bad as “The Guardian of Forever”, maybe worse. The livejournal version has been edited (thank you, argusblack!) but I haven't edited the others yet.

Part II:

 

“All things are due to you, and though on earth  
it happens we may tarry a short while,  
slowly or swiftly we must go to one  
abode; and it will be our final home.  
Long and tenaciously you will possess  
unquestioned mastery of the human race.  
She also shall be yours to rule, when full  
of age she shall have lived the days of her  
allotted years. So I ask of you  
possession of her few days as a boon.  
But if the fates deny to me this prayer  
for my true wife, my constant mind must hold  
me always so that I cannot return--  
and you may triumph in the death of two!"  
While he sang all his heart said to the sound  
of his sweet lyre, the bloodless ghosts themselves  
were weeping”

-Ovid's Metamorphoses, “Orpheus and Eurydice” lines 53-70

 

Breaking Star Fleet regulations never failed to thrill down Jim's spine. It was, however, much less fun without Bones grumbling at his elbow, without Spock meticulously calculating the odds down to the seventh decimal point. Lying to the transporter techs had been easy. Being captain had its perks. Sooner or later, the hawk-eyed ones would it figure out...Uhura and Bones would track him down...but until then, he ran as fleet as foxes, soft-soled as shadows, in the capital building's bowels.

All of Theta Nix was still in slumber now. The Prime Minister was probably making love to his scaley little wife this moment. Jim tried not to think of that. The walls of all official buildings were blackish stone, eerily cold here underground. Pierced now only by the single beam of Jim's pocket flashlight, the coal-toned rock gave the appearance of a great twisting gulf from which Hades' three-headed dog had burst. Goosebumps rippled through Jim's flesh from both excitement and the rising cold which gusted up to meet him.

The possibility of being court marshalled loomed over his head.

Losing the Enterprise.

That had been one of the things Bones leveled against him the day before, when the use of the word “logical” had set Jim roaring.

“They'll take your girl away from you, Jim. Don't you love her more than anything?

Yes, Jim loved his ship. More than anything? A month ago, he would have thought so...

Though some moments seem ordinary while being lived and gain importance only in retrospect, sometimes you know right then and there what you are breathing now you, will never shake. This, Jim thought snarkily, plunging into the darkness, was one of those moments.

“There comes a time where the individuating choice is made, the choice by which the either/or is established, validating the idea by which one chooses to live or die...and that choice is made in fear and trembling.”

 

()()()

Kirk had held Spock's body for almost an hour.

Or so they told him. At the time, he was time-numb.

He clutched Spock so tightly the Vulcan's bones bruised him. While stroking one cold cheekbone with his thumb, he pressed the other cheek tight to his chest, kissed the part of his sleek, blood-matted hair.

“Jim,” a disembodied growl rumbled overhead “Jim, let go of him.”

No.

He burrowed his face into Spock's stiffening shoulder, like a child hiding in its mother's skirt.

“Jim. Pleeese.” the growl cracked fearfully now. Warm flesh on each of Jim's shoulders. “Jim...come on, kid...there's nothing more you can do.”

Eventually, they pried him from Jim's jerking arms. Shaking uncontrollably, Jim elevated dead to his legs and half suspended in the world as a ghost he lingered... the world was acid-bright and white at the edges.

Flitting off of seconds and time bright and white at edges...smearing in memory...

Spock's eyes were closed now. 'Maybe I closed them, maybe not', one of the few nerved fragments of Jim's brain mulled. It didn't seem to matter much either way. Someone (possibly Jim again) had wiped most of blood from the ashen face, but still inky green trickled from the corners of his mouth and eyes. The streaks from his eyes mirrored tears.

Jim tried clumsily to wipe off the blood with sleeves bloodier than the Vulcan. He smeared on him more green. The warm was leading him now. Numb to it all, he followed

White came down flat as snow and eternity and claimed Spock's face.

All faces are featureless beneath sheets.

“Jim. Jim, look at me. I think you're in shock.”

“We'll get through this,” more hands. Different ones...long-fingered, silken, brown...cupped him gently. Honeysuckle perfume in his nostrils the salty copper blood scent. “We'll get through this Jim...” her face, pressed into his chest, began to shudder like a house with foundations yanked from underneath, arms coiling tight around his waist. “We'll get through this. We'll tough it out and get through this because that's what he would have wanted from us, what he would have expected...”

Unreality sharpened to hyper-real. His captain's gut kicked in.

This is real. It actually happened.

Oh my God....

Scotty wrapped his arms around Nyota, rocking her tenderly, as Jim's knees trembled and liquidized, dropping him in a chair McCoy barely pulled out in time.

()()()

The ship's computer had found a plethora of information about how Thetan time travel supposedly worked, without any comment as to whether or not it actually did.

Well, so it goes.

Jim was careful not to delete the search from his computer history, careful to still his paranoia and leave unlocked his quarter doors. If something went wrong, he needed Uhura and Bones to find him. He knew they would.

“ But if this goes right,” he had thought to himself, placing his PADD (unsecurity locked) on his desk. “They will never, ever know.”

According to Thetan lore, Thetan rulers had used time travel to protect their people for millenia. The time paradox did not create an alternate universe, nor did rewinding time create a “second” traveler (Jim wondered idly what it would be like to meet another Jim Kirk...how bizarre it would be...he had never asked Spock.) After time had unraveled backwards, only the traveler his or herself could remember the events before the backturn. Therefore, once Jim prevented Spock from dying, only he would remember the Vulcan's death and its aftermath. No one else ever need know it happened.

In this way, the Thetan rulers had ensured that their people lived in the best of all possible worlds. A truly perfect world was impossible to achieve, Thetan philosophers warned. However, because all possible consequences of all possible choices could be experienced, the Thetan rulers were able to carefully siphen the course of events to create the most harmonious universe possible. Or at least, the least choatic.

But several centuries before the first contact of Earth, the last of the Thetan rulers had been overthrown by a gaggle of rebels. The Thetan homeworld had crumbled from a monolithic culture to a cluster of rival tribes, all neck-deep in disagreement with eachother. The tribes scattered across the galaxy. From what Jim understood, the Prime Minister and his cohorts were descendents of the original ruling tribe of Theta. They were but lowly traders now, content to run ploddingly this little, troubled colony without delusions of grandeur.

So it goes.

On the day of Spock's death, the Prime Minister had spoken of a 'time chamber' nestled deep within the bowls of the capital building, kept as a monument to an older, purer time. From what Jim understood, the Thetans had a sort of telepathy, much weaker than that of a Betazoid or even a Vulcan. The time-travel device was a sort of chair, from what Jim could make out through the awkward translation on his PADD (no match for Uhura's nuanced ones). The chair focused the Thetan's telepathy, strengthening it, and linked the lizard's consciousness to a higher plane. By focusing the point of one's consciousness upon the flux of space and time, the traveler would zip back to a particular place. The timeline itself would fold over so that the chain of events would establish a logical reason for the traveler's location.

Jim was not telepathic, but he wasn't completely psi-null, either. Jim and Spock had mind-melded on several occasions. The first time occurred when Jim was in a coma, on their third or fourth mission, when he and Spock had been stranded on an untamed planet, separated from McCoy. It had been a major turning point in their friendship, one of their first leaps of trust. The second time had been in their second year, when Jim was emotionally traumatized because a mission reminded him too strongly of Tarsus IV. Spock had joined minds with Jim before launching into Vulcan meditation, allowing Jim to vicariously soak up his calm. The third and final time had been a year ago, when they joined minds in curiousity one night on a whim, feeling one another team bright in their skulls until Jim began to dig too deep, causing Spock to start back, break off.

Jim had never got around to asking why...

Anyway, through mind-melding with Spock, Jim knew that his mind was unusually sensitive for a human's. Spock had told him so. He may not have been a telepath, but he wasn't truly psi-null, either. Besides, Jim set his teeth grittily, he was Jim T. goddam Kirk, the only cadet ever to cheat the Kobiyashi Maru, to become a captain at the age of 25, to boldly go where no one had gone before. “Physically impossible for humans”-for anyone-was not a barrier to anything he did.

 

()()()

 

“Admiral.”

“Captain.” (pause.) “Jim. I...I heard. It hasn't hit the press yet, but I was notified through official channels.” (pause.) “Oh God, Jim, I am so, so sorry...”

“Yeah. Well, it happens.”

“He was a real hero. One of the finest souls I have ever known. I am honored to have known him and to have had him as my first officer and science officer before he was yours...and I know you esteemed as deeply as I do.”

“Thank you, Admiral Pike.”

 

“...are you alright, Jim?”

“I'm the captain of a starship, Admiral. I have to be alright. I don't have a choice not to be.”

“Has Dr. McCoy checked you out? To be franky, you don't look like you are all here with me right now.”

“I'm all here. Spock's the one who took a shot through the juglar, not me.”  
.

 

“Okay. Okay. Okay, Admiral...Chris. I'm not alright. I just watched my best friend die right in front of me without any reason, without any purpose...not even doing something heroic like saving me or the galaxy like the big damn hero I know he was...”

“Shussh. Shusssh. It's okay. This is a personal call, I'm not here as your CO, Jim. I'm waving you as your friend. And as Spock's. You've been Captain of the Enterprise for over four years now, you know what it's like losing crewmembers...”

“This is different.”

“Of course it's different, this is your first officer. Your friend. I...I know how close you two were. How much he meant to you. Spock and I had nothing but utmost respect for eachother, don't get me wrong, Jim. I would have taken a bullet for that Vulcan, and I know he would have done the same for me. What you two had though...it was special. You two were a helluva team. That doesn't come across every...”

 

“...Jim?”

 

“You can cry in front of me, Jim, it's normal. Do you think I've never cried over an officer's death before? Hell, I've cried during eulogies I've given, right in front of everybody.”

 

“Okay. Okay. Well, alright then...now that you've got it out of your system...Jesus Christ, Jim, calm down.”

 

“...Jim?”

“Yeah...yeah...sorry...I just...I can't breathe, Chris, I feel like...I..just...got...stabbed...in the lungs...I c-can't breathe...”

“Jim....I have to ask...what was he to you?”

“W-what?”

“What...exactly was Spock to you?'

 

“Oh, Jim, oh my God I had no idea...I won't mention it. I won't tell a soul. God, I am so, so sorry...I sometimes wondered but I...God, I'm sorry.” Pause. “I know it's not enough. I..I don't even know what to say to you.”

“What are you talking about?'

“You don't have to talk to me if you don't feel like it. Just know I'm on your side, kid. I'm going to be on Vulcan II for the funeral, we'll talk face to face then. Take care, Jim. And Jim...get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.”

End comm.

()()()

 

“Whoever designed this building,” Jim thought to himself, holding his phaser stiff-elbowed in front of him as he crept, hunched, through the dark. “needed to see more old Earth action movies.”

All winding paths trailed directly to the time chamber, like all nerves leading to a brain. Part of Jim was half expecting an elaborate templesque room, like the pit in the climax of his favorite childhood movies; a glided, artifact strewn treasure trove splitting at the seams with Thetan history.

Not quite.

The Time Chamber was a low-ceilinged, rectangular room stiffled and flat as a cheap hanger. The stone walls, more chilled than ever, were black as pitch but in the stark white spotlight, seemed thundercloud gray. The single beam of light encased the room's sole object. A twisted rickety metal chair was in the center of the floor. It might have been a rust-gnawed piece of modern art, were not for the wires which snaked up the back like fat pulsing veins, the button aglow on the right armrest. A thick metal ring crowned the head rest. Little needles rimmed the ring, glistening gossemer in the spotlight, like the paintings of saints's haloes Jim had hated as a child.

He became aware of something painful and profound in his ribcage, a thing strange and terrible and wonderful and forgotten. It was the sound of his heart, beating.

“Jskldjfkljlioe!”

Jim jumped as two chattering voices snapped the silence, spitting out syllables quick as machine guns. Two Thetan guards, fat little bodies squeezed into leathery uniforms, waddled towards him fast as their porky legs could manage, drawing weapons smoothly from their shoulder blades.

They were either very funny or sad or a mixture of both in a pathetic sort of way, depending on how you looked at it. Most things in life are, Jim reflected. He already felt guilty for what he was about to do.

He flicked his phaser to stun. or the first time in his life, Jim phased an innocent Federation citizen.

 

()()()

The night Spock died, Jim stayed up all night. Aimlessly about his quarters he paced, his mind unable to fasten to whatever work he tried. Spock's face swam before him. Somehow, Jim couldn't recall how Spock looked when he was alive, even though he had seen that face every day for the past four years. After several blurred hours, he could no longer recall exactly how Spock had looked dead, either. Memory zoomed into on those single inky tears streaking down an icy cheek. No other feature could form in Jim's mind. Those tears, and...those hands, fingers slightly curved and stiff-jointed, limp-wristed, perfectly still.

Moving unthinkingly, Jim found himself walking the familiar path between his and Spock's quarters. They had had Scotty install it after their first year, weary of looping around in the hall and buzzing another through when one wanted to spring an idea in the dead hours of the night. As Jim was something of an insomiac, and Spock required less sleep than humans, many a night had been spent ping-ponging ideas, rehashing missions, or bonding over paperwork or chess. That is how it all started, all those years ago, when respectful distance and awkward respect had begun to fizzle into something bordering friendship...

Neck-hairs on end, Jim passed silent through the shadowy channel he knew so well, feeling strangely shamed, as if breaking into a stranger's house. The doors hissed open.

Spock's quarters were simply decorated, upholstered in Vulcan rust red. Several pieces of Vulcan art adorned an otherwise Spartan room-a mosiac of two warriors fighting, a lirpa on a mantal piece, a rustic pottery bowl. There was human art as well, including a Matisse Jim had always admired. Both standard, Vulcan, and Terran books crammed, over-crowded, on his bookshelf. Spock had shared Jim's love for real paper books, the kind in which you could breathe in the musty yellowing pages.

Smiling through tears Jim had not even realized were streaming down his face, he traced a gentle finger down one book's threadbare spine. He moved about the room without thinking, muscles making his decisions for him.

The chess set lay unmoved in mid-game. They had been playing, Jim realized, when the orders to go to Theta Nix had come through.

Jim found himself prying open the closet doors. Unlike Jim's clothes, unfolded, leaking from the sheelves, Spock's uniforms formed precisely folded squares in a row on the shelf. Gingerly, Jim lifted one of the blue command shirts to his face.

Crisp peppermint detergent. Star fleet standard.

Sick almost to vomiting, Jim abruptly dropped the shirt. Spock couldn't have done his laundry every day...not even he was that much of a neat freak...

There it was. A laundry basket squished in the corner. Nearly empty, yes, but...

A science blue, crusted with sweat, was crumpled on the basket button. Snatching it up, he pressed it to his face as if it were an oxygen mask. As he breathed deep, the floors rose up to touch his knees, the wall curved forward to brace his back. Jim's eyes closed and he leaned into the room's embrace,breathing shakily. Coppery sweat the hint of pepper and iron like humans and maybe a touch of Uhura's perfume and lab formaldahyde and the smell of that glossy hair

Jim wondered if that was shampoo, or if Spock's hair just smelled like that.

Jim wouldn't know, having only smelled it once...

He barely slammed into the restroom before vomiting up pure stomach bile. He had not eaten all day. When he finished, acid trail stinging his esophagus, he wandered back in, slumped up against the wall, and felt his eyes focus, wide-pupiled, on the mosaic.

Two warriors were tangled together in a knot of limbs and skin.

“What is that a mosaic of? Some scene from Vulcan's violent, pre-Surakian past?” Jim had asked once. Spock had edged a sideways glance, inclining his head a degree.

“No.”

“...are you going to tell me what it is?”

His mouth thinned.

“I think not.”

This had been in the budding stages of their friendship, when passing time together off-duty still felt artificial, when Jim still weighed each word knowing the wrong one could spike a Vulcan hissy fit. Funny, now, remembering all the misunderstandings...Jim had felt nothing but absolutely comfortable with Spock for years now.

No, it was more than just comfortable. Sitting here in this room, all those nights-sometimes working sometimes simply passing time-Jim and Spock had possessed an understanding which transcended all words. All Jim knew is that when they were alone together, a warm free liberated him, made him feel like the final riffs of the world's greatest song, like the horizon was flying towards him like credits on a screen, like his heart was infinite.

It was that feeling he had as a child his first summer in Tarsus, before the massacre. When liberated of his mother and Frank, he had run barefoot and happy as though he owned the world. And there had been other barefoot kings of Tarsus, pigtailed daughters of the Universe, his first friends. He had been too young to understand why or that until Spock he would never feel that way again. Until those nights he stayed up talking with Spock, Jim never thought he could feel that way again, had even forgotten he ever knew the feeling. All Jim knew was in the summer of the amber fields, he loved being alive. All he knew was that he belonged.

“Jim...what was Spock to you?”

Admiral Pike's almost shocked voice, rising in dawning understanding, echoed in his mind. At the time, Jim had been so occupied with screaming without sound, silently smashing his fists bloody against his own desk in white noise, he heard Pike without listening.. Now, slightly calmed, he thought back.

What was Spock to him?

My best friend. My brother-in-arms. My first real home.

But why the shock in Pike's voice? Why that sudden comprehension, the sudden rush of sympathy from a different vein? And “I won't tell anyone” What was up with that?

Then the mosaic popped up as though Jim was seeing it for the first time, rather than having stared at it blind-eyed for minutes.

The warriors were not fighting. They were making love.

A eyebrow arched gracefully. Flicked sardonically. Furrowed with its twin in concentration, the eyes beneath it utterly consumed with work. Fleet fingers ran smoothly over computers, seized chest pieces, curled around Jim's wrist, anchoring him to the side of a cliff. The details filtered to him now in fragments, details he had memorized without realizing. A thin liped mouth, a mouth Jim loved to make strain in effort to stay flat...

The darkest eyes Jim had ever known, sometimes mirrors, sometimes clear as the galaxy sprawled before the Enterprise monitor; infinite and freckled with worlds.

Oh my God.

“I love you.”

The confession popped out without warning. Draped in the darkness, Jim spoke to the room, alone nestled amongst bookshelves and shadow.

“I...I don't know how it happened, but I do. I don't know when it started or why I didn't realize it before now but I think...I think everybody else did and...oh my God, I love you.”

He repeated it again shakily, a hiccuping little dry sob shattering the last syllable.

“I really, really do.”

Gasping for air, he sucked deep into his aching lungs, speaking one last time as his legs grew able to bear his weight. He rose to his feet, staring wildly around the room one, long, last time.

“I love you,” he whispered once more for good measure, with the finality of an ending prayer.

Before slidding from the room, Jim paused and turned back towards the chess set. He took the black queen into his hand, squeezing her so hard his finger ridges bled.

()()()

Slowly, still half-expecting security to leap from the shadows, Jim walked to the center of the room.

“It's a little late for doubt,” he chidded himself, squeezing into the too-small chair. His lowerback already ached. Carefully, he lowered the ring to crown his skull. Latches clamped down automatically on his wrists. The button pulsed emerald beneath his index finger.

(Do I dare disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions....)

He pushed the button. The needles sunk into his skull.

(Which a minute will reverse)


	3. Chapter 3

Part III

Instincts that can still betray us,  
A journey that leads to the sun,  
Soulless and bent on destruction,  
A struggle between right and wrong.  
You take my place in the showdown,  
I'll observe with a pitiful eye,  
I'd humbly ask for forgiveness,  
A request well beyond you and I.

Heart and soul, one will burn.  
Heart and soul, one will burn.

An abyss that laughs at creation,  
A circus complete with all fools,  
Foundations that lasted the ages,  
Then ripped apart at their roots.  
Beyond all this good is the terror,  
The grip of a mercenary hand,  
When savagery turns all good reason,  
There's no turning back, no last stand.

Heart and soul, one will burn.  
Heart and soul, one will burn.

Existence well what does it matter?  
I exist on the best terms I can.  
The past is now part of my future,  
The present is well out of hand.  
The present is well out of hand.

Heart and soul, one will burn.  
Heart and soul, one will burn.  
One will burn, one will burn.  
Heart and soul, one will burn.

-Joy Division, “Heart and Soul”

 

First came molton light patches. The rest of the universe soldified in degrees. Shadows sharpened to shape, figure from form, lines from silouettes. Jim's head felt paper thin as he lifted the metal crown of thorns from his brow, sluggish as if dragged from dream.

Nothing had changed. He was still in the dark room.

His heart strings swelled with fear and longing and hope and exhilaration...had it worked? Had it not? How was he supposed to know? His mind was hypersensitive to the world, everything so sharp and clear it felt unreal. Scrunching up his face, Jim stretched himself out of the chair. His thoughts ran indefinite, unpinned.

Though he had changed, the room stayed the same. What if his telepathy had been too weak...

“Jjlskfklsjkle!”

The exact same squatty guards stunned less than a minute ago (or was it two weeks in the future?) waddled towards him in a chittering fuss, once more drawing their weapons. In two sharp blasts, Jim stunned them both for the second time, and, for the second time, twinged guiltly when they plopped on their backs.

A wicked grin burst upon his face. His first smile in two weeks. Look upon my power, world, and quake.

Splitting at the seams with anarchial joy, Jim slammed from the room, taking the black stairs three at a time. He ran crazily through the hallways, heedless of the strained in his ribs, stunning the security guards who bumbled from corners as easily as he stunned the two in the room.

Somewhere in this universe, Spock breathed.

()()()

The capital building was only a few blocks away from the site of The Place (as Jim had unconsciously thought of it), but Jim was unsure as to what time it was, or even if it was the same day. Rollicking and rolling through the matrix of time-space was tricky business indeed. Jim had a father-free childhood to prove it. Besides, he could not trust over much in the preciseness of his telepathy. Skidding breathless to a stop outside the capital building, he whipped out his comunicator for the time.

Fifteen minutes until Spock's death.

Through the streets of Theta Nix, he shot like a bat out of hell. He knew where he was going. He had memorized the entire block where Spock had died, obcessively threaded the blue prints through his memory. The block and address of the assassin's hideout was tattoed on his brain.

God help whatever son of a bitch was there when James T. Kirk arrived, chockful of a reclaimed future.

Spock was alive.

Spock was alive.

Though his friend was not out of the woods yet, exhilaration quivered in Jim like he never thought he could feel again. He shook in absurd joy and cared not that the little heads of the Thetans flicked towards him as he ran. “Never mind me,” his mind crowed triumphant. “I'm fighting for this friend, you see, whom I loved and whom I lost.” But that was a different past, Jim forced down the panic rising like sour vomit in his throat, when he reflected he might still be too late. That past is gone. I'm going to find Spock and tell him I how much I love him, and whether or not he returns my feelings is almost beside the point. He's alive. That will be enough...and nothing shall ever part us.

Because Theta Nix was a small colony, the colonists were packed in dense to save space and resources. Sleek oxnx wormhole hallways winded through the block where the assassin had lurked, a block housing a thousand-odd Thetans. On the 10th floor, Jim crept sideways, silently closing in on the chosen door-boulder with precise, catish grace, phaser drawn. The faint hum of chattering Thetans seaped through the silver doors. The mirror-clear door of the room was already slightly cracked (“to allow for a quick escape?” Jim mused.) As absorbed in the moment as the moment was absorbed in him, Jim paused, over-conscious of the chatter from a farther room, of the near silence, of his eardrums thudding dully, of his own, erratic breathing. Through the door's sliver, Jim could see the outline of a Thetan assassin bent beneath the window, dangling a long-nose sniper shooter over the sill.

Without lowering his phaser, Jim snuck into the warehouse-empty chamber unnoticed. He considered felling the bastard who killed the love of his life with a single, painless stun.

He beat the fucking shit of him with his bare hands instead.

All notions of mercy (Compassion, Spock, it might be the only way to assure peace with the Romulans) were blurred in the sound and fury that had stewed inside his brain since the time travel, this brave new world where his thoughts richoetted off the inside of his skull resisting to be rooted in objects, bucking wildly from logic and bumping like rubber-fronted toy cars off of conclusions and meaning and wrapped round the night like melted revolutions what the fuck was he thinking...his eyes could focus his brain could talk and his neck was screwed on more or less straight to this neck bursting at the juglars with everything good god, what am I thinking , what does it mean?

what was the point of meaning in words, anyway? Meaning was the repitilean bill shattering satisficatorarily against the concrete. The sweet sickening crack of its brittle teeth splittering. (my God, that hot nihilism of anarchy raged in him.) Every muscle quaking like a rubber band stetched to near snap, Jim backed away, still gripping the scruff of the assassin's neck, white rage ebbing in pulses from his eyes. He flipped the ragdoll-limp body in the arms, determined to see the face.

It was Roltz. The Prime Minister's assistant.

“You!”

“Don't kill me, Captain Kirk!” the lizard squeaked, shaking like a scaly meraca and spitting out chunks of bloody teeth. “I was just following orders! It is nothing against you...how did you get here? How did you discover?”

As terrified as he was of Jim, there seemed to be something or someone he feared more. Jim's warbling brain recognized, vaguely, that he should think about that...his thoughts should dart there...but he seemed unable to fasten concretely unto ideas.

“Why were you trying to kill your own Prime Minister?” Kirk lifted Roltz until his horny feet dangled a yard or so off the ground, kicking spastically like an insect in death throes. “Political gain? Personal reasons?”

Roltz's ruined mouth clamped vice shut. His liquid eyes blinked deeply for a touch of innocence, meek even when his face was smashed to a pulpy mush.

A thought that had crossed Jim's mind at the time of the shooting, but,in the aftermath, had been washed over by his shock and grief, hit him with dawning horror. The window was not far from the targets. The assassin's marksmanship had been exceptionally poor. Funny, really, that Roltz had been so close to his targets, yet all of his shots had missed by far...

All shots save one.

“You were aiming for Spock,” Jim managed to squeeze through teeth gritted so hard it hurt, his face bone-white in rage. “You were aiming for Spock, you son of a bitch.”

Roltz did not even bother denying it.

“I....how did you find out about the plans...we just...want..Star Fl..eet to leave us...alon..”

Jim snapped his neck in one pop of his knuckles.

My God, what have I done? Part of his brain whined hysterically, drowned out by the much louder, more authoritive voice, his Captain voice: “The Prime Minister himself set this up...he doesn't want Star Fleet prying into something he is doing...but what?” Jim would uncover the Prime Minister's secret, he vowed.

And he would uncover it with Spock at his side.

Jim's departing shadow reflected flipped upside down in Roltz's glassy eyes. The lizard's corpse sprawled on the floor, crumbled as a marionette with cut strings. Blood as green as a Vulcan's dripped from snaggled teeth into his open mouth.

()()()

When Jim descended to the streets, Spock was with the greeting party. Even Jim's hatred of the Prime Minister was quelched by the utter joy that absorbed him when he saw Spock alive.

Spock stood with his hands folded in the small of his back, straight-spined, head titled in polite consideration as he listened to the Minster's wife. Jim ached beautifully to see that eyebrow arch...the way he'd seen a million times before and a day ago would have given his right arm to see again. My God, how did I not realize how much I loved him until they lowered him in the ground?

“Spock!” his throat was raw and scraped. The Vulcan turned.

“Captain,” Spock stepped forward quickly, visibly shocked through his compsure to see Jim standing before him. “Why did you not inform me of your intent to beam down to the planet's surface?”

Jim lunged at him desperately, throwing wide his arms as he ran. In mere seconds, he would have his arms around his friend's shoulders, squeezing him painfully tight, burying his face in a shoulder once cold now warm and alive and breathing and blood that once ran loose now pulsing hot through his veins and....

Jim passed through Spock easily as a ghost and slipped smoothly off the edge of a cliff.

 

McCoy's face was the entire sky.

Bones? Pipped Jim's mind wearily. The doctor's lips were moving but Jim could hear no sound. Static blurred and shrieked and echoed in his swollen eardrums. All the universe smeared in white smoke and liberated of his body, he floated, suspended (“What is happening to me? Where the hell is Spock? Why is McCoy here?)

Weight pressed down on each temple like his skull was sandwhiched between cars. His brain was about to leak out his tearducts, his eyeballs spring from his sockets. Jim screamed.

()()()

“Your move, Mr. Spock.”

“Do not rush me, Captain.”

“...annoyed, Mr. Spock?”

“Hardly. I am merely contemplating my next move. Some prefer to play chess with careful attention, rather than blunder blindly about the board with no apparent regard for strategy.”

“Well, my blundering is kicking your ass right now...”

“... you have not left your seat, Captain, and if you were to kick me I would be forced to file charges against your pers...”

“Spock. Come on. We've been working together 3 months now. I know you know more idioms than you let on. What I was going to say is that my 'blundering blindly' is apparently working in my favor.”

“Yes. As paradoxical as it may seem, your strategy-or lack thereof-is is so choatic and illogical it functionally borders on a kind of logic.”

“Thank you...I think. You know, this is the most relaxed I've felt since being made Captain. We should do this more often.”

“Agreed. Your move.”

“Knight to E6.”

 

“Spock...may I ask you something?”

“I believe you just did, Captain.”

“Verrry funny. Actually, it's about the Kobiyashi Maru. You never did tell me why you were so pissed off that I cheated. At first I thought you were just a pompous, arrogant prick with a stick up your ass who couldn't bear to be proven wrong about anything. But now I see you're actually surprisingly open minded...what about the Kobiyashi Maru set you off?”

“I...cannot deny that these past three months have seen me realize the virtue of being open to alternative viewpoints.”

“...you mean my craziness is actually rubbing off on you?”

“...and I admit the error of my ways in goading you about your father's death during the hearing.”

“We talked about this already. I'm more curious as to why that test is so important to you. I mean, yeah, it's impossibly hard, but it probably took your brain like, what, an afternoon to program it?”

 

“For me, the Kobiyashi Maru is a metaphor for other things.”

“Yeah?”

“The no-win scenario is something that every sentient being-captain or no, even enlisted or not-must one day have to face.”

“Well, I have never found one that I couldn't wriggle, cheat, lie, charm, figure, or sleep my way out of.”

“Then you know nothing of death.”

 

“Allow me to explain, Capt...Jim. My life has often been...difficult, at times. Yet the Vulcan way is to bear suffering out with dignity and pride. More importantly, it has been my experience that denial of the truth has been the root of much evil and immorality in the world. You yourself know that hiding behind pleasant fantasies, ignoring the problem at hand, only leads to problems being perpetuated.”

“Yeah, but the whole point of the Kobiyashi Maru is that it's a problem that can't be solved...”

“Precisely. The problem of the test cannot be changed. The variable is the reaction of the cadet. That is the true test. By cheating on the test, by hardwiring the test to work in an unnatural, unrealistic way, I believed that you were exhibiting an attitude I found morally repulsive; the attitude of a young boy in denial living a hedonistic, unexamined life without intellectual or moral courage. The attitude of one who cared more for twisting the world to suit his daydreams than facing the reality, unaware that living in unreality may trigger very real, very deadly consequences for his potential crew. I was unimpressed.”

“What changed your mind about me? You...did change your mind about me, right?'

“Though I was unimpressed to your solution to the test, I was impresesd with the courage you showed during the Nero situation. You faced possible death with selflessness and courage. It convinced me that a test and reality are often, not, the same thing, and that a person's behavior on the Kobiyashi Maru did not necessarily reflect their actual character. It seems....”

 

“It seems I have learned much about the complex nature of humans over the brief course of our serving together. Your move.”

“Ah, damn. My queen. Okay...knight to E12.”

“Ah. Excellent response, Captain.”

“Thanks.”

 

“You know you can call me 'Jim' when we are off duty, right?”

“I am aware of that fact, Captain. Your move.”

()()()

Jim blinked.

He was sitting straight-kneed on his ass, palms pressed into the concrete beneath a ridiculously blue sky, encircled by snub-toed bare feet. He blinked again. A circle of humans kneeled about him, staring wide-eyed as animals whose habitat had just been disturbed by some new, artificial thing.

“Are you well, my brother?” cooed a tawny-haired, broad-faced woman around Jim's own age. She was beautiful; her eyes unusually large and blue and serene, though somehow unfocused, fixated on the beyond.

“Yeah,” Jim rubbed his head. “W...where am I? What just happened?”

“You were drifting,” she answered hazily. “It was very close. You almost fell into the world of being and becoming, but we were able to draw you deep into the world without change. Do not do that again,” she admonished mildly, frowning at Jim as though he were a naughty child. “You do not want to return to that world. It is most fortunate, my brother, that we were here to rescue you.”

She wore a vague smile so happy and innocent it would have been lovely on a child's face. On her, it was insipid at best, almost disturbing at worst. The smile was mirrored on the dirty faces of the others, aglow with a transcendent joy and contentment. They reached out to stroke Jim with loving palms. A filmy glaze glistened over their eyes, like tinted lens, and in the mercery-toned whites Jim's own reflection smeared before him indistinct,;dark half-moons beneath his eyes skull sockets in the blur. Identical tiny red marks spotted their writs.

“N users,” Jim realized. Now they seemed about as dangerous as water lilies, but he recalled that they, supposedly, could turn vicious without warning when the reality of their dreams was questioned.

And speaking of dreams and reality...where was Spock?

“Thank you,” Jim told the fish-scale irised girl. “Miss....”

“I was Leila Kalomi in my other life, but you may call me “sister,” “ she replied, her dreamy voice suddenly heavy as though those words were supposed to mean something.

“Leil...sister. Thank you for saving me. I am grateful...”

“I did not save you,” she said quickly, frowning at Jim gently once more. “I am a vessel of love and eternity and happiness.”

“...right, well, I'm grateful to you anyway, but I have to go now.”

He stumbled to his feet, braincells smarting with a dull that rivaled the worst hangover he had ever had. The circle parted from him. Several of them began to sing a happy, skipping sort of tune easily humable, but with unprecise lyrics...“We are One, You and I, in the Earth and In the Sky...we are family we are everything, we are one and we are many...”

“Do not fall into false philosophies and trust not in your own understanding!” Leila called after Jim as he ran from them as fast as his wobbling legs would allow, her voice drowned by his pulsing eardrums.

Something slopped about messily in his brain as he ran. The lumps inside his skull, which had at first been mere bruises, were swelling up now like gooseeggs on his brain, his cranium throbbing as if edging on explosion. His thought patterns grew less distinct by the minute. He was finding it hard to focus on anything as he ran blindly threw the streets. Exahaustion fighting his will, all his thought was bent on making it back to the capital building, hoping beyond all hope that Spock had stuck to plan, that he would be there, with the Minister, now.

Jim had definitely injuired his brain in the time travel.

He found he didn't much care.

Spock. Spock. Spock. Spock. He beat out the name with every tortured step he took, willing himself to keep running through the haze. The steps of the Capital reminded him a bit of the steps to an abandoned temple that Chekhov and Sulu had found while hiking on shore leave on a jungle planet. (he skipped now so quickly between thought and memory he breathed the past now as clear as the present.) The entire command team had beamed down for a picnic. Sulu had challenged Jim to a fencing match there, even though a picnic was an odd place to fence, because “it would be so freaking cool to have an epic duel in these gigantic, incredible ruin.” Jim had had his ass handed to him, of course, while Chekhov watched in giddy delight. Uhura had completely geeked out, delightedly translating the ruins scrawled on the temple, and eventually proclaimed them a distant cousin of some language Jim had never heard of before. She then took a nap with Scotty, curled up in his lap in the soft white sunlight. Spock, of course, had never been to a picnic before and had hovered on the outskirts of the function, observing and commentating on “the behavior of humans in a recreational habitat” with a biologist's calucaled eye. Jim had listened with a barely stifled grin as McCoy, offended by Spock classifying their behavior like one would an animal's, sparked an epic snark-fest with the Vulcan.

Remembering that day now now in his half-dream state, plunging through the capital's great padlocked doors, bound for the Main Hall...that scene of their happiness took on an etereal glow. Laughing, touching, smiling, simply lounging about together free of worry, there was a sea of light below them like the stratosphere, a sea of light above like haloes. Spock was there. They were all there; one big happy family. Young and full-bodied. They were living out the best days of their lives, and they knew it.

How could that kind of beauty go to shit so fast for absolutely no reason?

What kind of world do we live in that could happen without warning?

When, Jim would have thought a week ago will I able to think about memories of all the great times without it being tranished by Spock's death?This is about getting back my past as much as it is about our future.

Past, present, and future all churned together into a single primordial ooze. I am in the past which is now the present in order to save our future but also our past because I can't have a present wihout Spock in my future and I can't have a past without him in my now and I am nowhere and I am no when and will have been and always will be here forever...

Forever

Jim stepped into the high-dommed room.

Spock stood on the otherside of the hallway.

Thetans clustered about his waist, but Jim paid them no mind. He and Spock simply stared at eachother, like rival cowboys in the old Western movies Jim had loved as a kid. Spock's aura of sleek, thick black hair glistened near blue at the highlights. Jim breathed raggedly, half-expecting him to disappear into a puff of smoke. Seeing Spock in the flesh began to sooth away the scars of his death, and Jim knew the black stain would soon be lifted from his waking thoughts and memory. Then, Jim took his first step forward. With great effort, he pushed his feet across the floor, drawing closer...and closer...and closer...

Spock was an arm stretch away

“Captain?”

Shaking as sobs began to rack his frame, Jim spread his arms wide, ready to hug Spock so tight he could curl inside the Vulcan and never, ever resurface...

“DO NOT TOUCH HIM, JIM. It will only make you worse.”

Jim skidding to a stop and whirled around on his heel.

The other, older Spock...the one from the other universe...was standing less than a yard behind him.

He looked absolutely terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter End Notes:  
> End notes:  
> I was really, really torn about Jim having kill Roltz because it seemed so out of character for him, yet I couldn't figure out another way to get rid of the guy. I justified it to myself for 2 reasons: (1) In “The Undiscovered County,” JimPrime makes a comment about letting the Klingons die because he's upset about his son dying. Now, I know JimPrime probably didn't mean it...but it does prove that he can be kinda vicious at times if you kill somebody he loves, even if he grows to regret it later. (2) There is an explanation for Jim's unusually vicious behavior given in the final chapter of the story. It is not stated explictly, but I think you can figure it out. But yeah, I am aware that Jim killing Roltz is very OOC, but I think the reason implied in the end offers an explanation. If you are still unsure about it, comment and Ill spell it out.


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Chapter Notes:  
> PLEASE READ THIS WARNING!!!!! This is the final act of "Theta Nix." I will not say "stop reading now and imagine the ending" because that would undermine the entire point of this story. If you finish it, you will know what I mean. But though I won't spoil it here, I will say that if you want a 100% happy ending complete with puppies and kittens and rainbows...it's not going to happen.

()()()  
Part IV

“It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.”  
-Albus Dumbledore

Existence well what does it matter?  
I exist on the best terms I can.  
The past is now part of my future,  
The present is well out of hand.

 

()()()

“How did you get here?”

Jim's brain spun like a compass dangled before a magnet. There was no way Other Spock could have just showed up...just popped up out of nowhere...unless...

No.

The Other Spock stepped forward imperiously, fingertips pressed together. Though his face was as composed as a death mask, compassion shone in this Spock more purely than it had ever touched Jim's.

“I believe,” he said gravely “that you have deduced the truth yourself, Jim.”

No.

Bones' face materializing....the N addicts' story...

“Leila was right, I was passing to a different world...the real one,” Jim managed to choke out though lungs clenched tight as a fist, drenched in cold shock. “That 'time machine' is a drug machine. Oh my God...I am high on Substance N right now. That's why my brain isn't working, why I can't think straight. This is a trip...isn't not real...those needles were full of Substance N and....”

The pieces fell together in awful symmetry, reality sharpening through hysteric fragments. The truth streamed from his mouth unclotted as his thoughts, rolling off his tongue as they flitted through his brain.

“I...there is no time travel. It's a myth made up by the Thetan leaders in order to control the masses. They wanted their people to believe that they lived in the best of all possible worlds so they would never question their leaders' goodness or authority.”

With a sudden bolt, he flung himself across the meters between himself and Prime Minister. With seconds Jim had him in a death grip, exhilarated at the eyes bulging terrified in his sockets.

“YOU are the one dealing Substance N to your own people, not the Ferengi! You want them to be complacent so they will not challenge your authority!”

“Jim,” the other Spock's restraining hand on Jim's shoulder was real as the Minister whose pulse raced in the thorny windpipe. “This is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is back on that planet. All people here but me, everyone you have meet since your injection, are all figments of your subconscious. You are in the sickbay of the Enterprise. Dr. McCoy sent for me when your condition worsened and he was unable to wake you from your drug coma. I have mind melded with you in an attempt to bring you back. All of this is a figment of your imagination, induced by the substance. Only I am real.”

“Jim, do not head this imposter!” the young Spock' hissed out desperately, naked fear in his face. Jim ached to see him...so young and fierce and beautiful. In two smooth, calm strides, Spock was at his side as he had always been, leaning into Jim to speak in hushed tones. “I do not believe him to be my counterpart. I neither recognize him nor trust him, Jim.”

“Jim,” Other Spock's desperation mirrored the younger's perfectly. Jim found himself sandwhiched between two fierce-eyed Spocks; one young and bright as a penny, the other weathered by centuries, but both bent on him with identical tense focus. “I would never harm you...”

“He wants me dead.” the younger Spock deadpaned. “He wants you all to himself.”

“Jim, do not listen to...”

“But his plans are futile,” iron fingers curved warm around Jim's wrists. Spock's face was inches from Jim's. Every pore in that dry white skin was thrown in sharp relief, every bristle upon that neck, every brown flesh curl in the iris of his eyes a valley. “You came for me. You behaved...with undue emotion,” the mouth trembled, amused, in that same old familiar way. “but nonetheless, I am grateful to you beyond all speaking. Nothing shall ever part us. Entreat me not to leave you, Jim. Where you go, I shall follow.”

Spock kissed him.

For a moment, Jim was blown clear of his mind. Spock's left thumb stroked Jim's temple as his fingers snaked Jim's hair, his right hand possessively cupping Jim's hip. Breaking like a cracking dam, Jim threw his arms around him; hugging the warm, breathing, pulsing, wriggling body to him as though he'd never let go, kissing him as if Jim was drowning and Spock's lips were air. The universe was a blur of rubbing noses and cheeks and eyes and skin hot and flushed and mingling tears. Jim's tongue plunged deep into Spock's mouth, both of his hands at the base of the Vulcan's skull, pressing their faces together until his nose bridge hurt.

Spock's brow pressed sweaty against Jim's. The flutter of Jim's heart was almost rapid as the Vulcan's as their chests pushed tight against another. Jim closed his eyes to soak in the moment. A muffled dry sob shuddered through him. Eyelashes brushed against his. The tip of Spock's nose rubbed a velvet streak against his cheek. Dry lips planted a soft, nipping kiss on his jaw.

“I'm here, Jim. Here, on Theta Nix, we can live forever.”

Icy horror sickened Jim's stomach.

As painfully as detatching a limb..Jim detangled himself from Spock's arms.

“The source of much immorality in the world....”

“You're not real...” he managed to gasp out. “You're...not Spock...the real Spock...my Spock...would never say that.”

“Jim...”

“YOU'RE NOT HIM!” ripped from him.. “This Substance causes a complacency... a mindless obediance...that my Spock would have hated. He found it repulsive. You...”

Jim began to laugh hysterically. His shaking fingers stretched longingly toward Vulcan's cheek, pulling back at the last millisecond before the gap closed.

“You are a very close copy, but...you're not my Spock. You're not the one who'd kick my ass in chess and tell me I'm being illogical and get me so pissed off at you sometimes I'd scream.”

“Sounds quite unpleasant.”

“Yeah, but it was real...it was real life...this...” Jim stumbled backwards as if drunkenly. “This is nothing compared to really living, even at its best it couldn't be have as good...”

Panting, gestulating spastically, he backed farther, quite derranged; as aquiver with truth and madness as Nietzsche's madman who raced barefoot through the streets, heralding the death of God.

“This...this kind of denial is the root of so much evil in the world and Spock wouldn't have condoned it. I want you,” Jim told Substance-N-Spock. “God, what I'd give to sink into your arms right now...but you're not the one I want...you're not him. The real Spock would have understood that wanting to get the past back gets you nowhere. He understood that sometimes you just have to accept a situation the way it is and deal with it, instead of trying to cheat your way out of it. He tried to tell me once. I never really got it...I thought it was about beating the Kobiyashi Maru, when all along, it was about knowing you were going to fail the test, but taking the test anyway. About going down with dignity and courage, loving the whole thing all the while. And there's something kinda awesome about that. I just have to keep carrying on, seizing whatever hope I can get, whatever joy I can find in this too short, fucked up, crazy absurd life in which we live. It's not enough. It's not even close to being enough...but sometimes, you know...I can make it enough. I will make it enough. I can't stay here. I want life.”

An unnatural smile gleamed on Substance-N-Spock's lips. Beneath the blood red sky, a sinister repitilean hue greened him.

“Well. If that is the choice that you make, Jim....”

Deny me and be condemned.

Substance-N-Spock snapped his fingers. A thousand-throated voice of one howled suddenly from behind Jim. The ruly, lion-haired mass of barefooted, scale eyed N addicts waved palms hypnotically over their heads. The Happy Song roared up in a cacophony a different tones and keys.

“We are One, You and I, in the Earth and In the Sky...”

“This human,” Substance-N-Prime-Minister annouced, throwing wide his fleshy palms. “This human...does not believe we live in the true reality.”

A disgruntled hiss erupted from the snake pit.

“He would rather return to the world of death and pain, than stay here! He thinks this all too easy!”

At this final blasphemy, the crowd exploded. Unleashed in furious wrath, a hairy wave rose up to fall upon Jim.

“Jim...”

The older Spock's wrinkled hand gripped his own, ancient face close enough to kiss.

“You must know the crowd is not real,” Spock whispered. “You must know that what they say is a lie. Otherwise, you might permanently damage your brain. You are very, very deep in coma, Jim.”

“What should we do?” Jim shouted in his pointed ear as the crowd descended upon them.

“Concentrate on reality. Come back.”

Reality. In reality, Spock was dead.

Truly dead.

He lay buried under New Vulcan sand. Within a year, his mossy black flesh would slide off his bones.

And I will never touch him again...never, never, never, never.

Maybe Jim would rather let his brain be fried, exist as a vegetable, then return to a world where he would never see those eyes again.

Never tell him he loved him...

He loved him.

A real flesh and blood being, not a fantasy, or a figment of his mind's own making.

I want to be the kind of person he deserved.

Wrinkling his eyelids shut, Jim nodded furiously.

The pavement split and flew up in concrete flakes, mixing smoothly with the melted sky so both worlds blurred in sound and shrieking and flesh shattering glass-brittle to white...

I love you, Spock.

A leap of faith...

Jim's eyes flew open.

The light stung him and seared through his eye nerves. Gasping for air, he bolted into McCoy's arms, quivering boneless on the gurney. His pierced brain was anerve with a great and terrible sanity.

 

()()()

“Why...” Spock spoket first, brow lumped in puzzled concentration “...did you not confide in either McCoy or myself before this moment, Captain.” He paused.”...Jim?”

“I didn't want anyone to know,” Jim sighed, voice hoarse from speaking for hours, heart exhausted from jarring that summer for years. “I didn't want you to look at me and think...”Tarsus IV” everytime we were on the bridge...”

The realization of what he had just revealed slammed into him. He tried to laugh, but the sentence gusted out from him shakily.

“I've never told any one any of what I just told you, before.”

Spock reached out tenatively...as if shocked by his own daring..and slowly, precisely...lay a hand on Jim's forearm in comfort.

And that was the moment that forever filled Jim with trembling: the first time his skin and Spock's touched. Years later, when he closed his eyes, he shuddered into the memory; wrecked by the terrible awe of intimacy. And no stars, no dawn, broke the shadow of that moment. A warm thumb caressed his forearm. And Jim knew right then and there that every hour from before would never cease to mean the world to him. He would never be able to shake that skin.

“Pain and suffering endure,” Spock whispered. “But so do many other things. Therefore, in the end, you will be...fine.”

 

()()()

“Hello, Jim.”

“Hey.”

“Well, I must say, you appear to be in better health than the last time I saw you.”

 

“Is my prescense unwelcome, Jim? I will not be offended if you do not desire my company.”

“No. Please. I'd rather talk to you than Bones or Nyota...I mean I love them and I'm grateful...”

“...but you are also shamed.”

“Yeah. I'd rather talk to you. I feel like I've betrayed their trust and I am going to make it up to them...I want to live up to their expectations of me just as much as I want to live up to...his. But I want to wait to apologize to my crew face to face. It's just...don't take this the wrong way.....you...you look like him. So much like him.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I look like your Jim Kirk, don't I?”

 

“Yes.”

“I...I am sorry...”

“Do not apologize. Apology is...”

“Illogical?”

“Not at all illogical, when a wrong has been committed. In this case, it has not. I was going to say “unnecessary.”

 

“I feel so foolish.”

“I imagine.”

“I just...fell for it. Just believed it so easily because I wanted to so badly. I think he'd be ashamed of me if he were here, if he knew the immoralites, the horrible ideology I believed just to get him back...”

“Jim...”

“He wouldn't have wanted me to. I realize that now...”the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.” I don't think he would have wanted me to come for him.”

 

“Your counterpart came for me.”

“...what?”

“I died once. In my original timeline. The situations were very different, and much more complicated. Suffice to say, I did not remain deceased. He..came for me. Perhaps I shall supply the details when I believe that they shall not cause you pain...”

“I don't want to know.”

“Admirable. Either way, as I have said, the circumstances were different and could not be repeated. He riksed his life and sacrificed much, and while I was loathe for him to be injuired or killed on my account...I understood, because I would have done the same for him. And I was grateful.”

 

“May I ask you something?”

“Of course. Whether or not I answer depends greatly on your question.”

“What was he to you? The other Kirk.”

 

“Everything.”

 

“Friend. Brother. Soulmate.....Lover. Bondmate. T'hy'la.”

“Okay, so you did...eventually...okay. Okay.”

“I did not desire to pain you...”

“No. I needed to know it was possible. Hell, I didn't even know if the other you swung that way...I never asked.”

 

“Jim, I...have debated whether or not to divulge certain information to you. Whether or not this information would bring you comfort or pain. My counterpart was a different person from me, just as you are different from my James Kirk. Yet I know that in another universe, the other you would have desired to know.”

“I'm not him, Spock.”

“A fact of which I am painfully aware.”

“...but I think I'm enough like him for you to know you can't just bring up something like that and expect me not to be curious. Spill.”

“Do you recall the mission to Vulcan II a mere few months ago?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you recall permitting your Spock several days of shore leave in order to visit Sarek?”

“Yes.”

“He also visited me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He was...quite irked at me, in fact. You see, he seemed to feel that I lied to him, betrayed him, manuplated him. He felt that I had hidden vital information from him and tricked him into a situation which overwhelmed him. However, when pressed, he admitted he was not entirely sorry I had done so.”

“Did you lie to him?”

“Vulcans do not lie...”

“Don't. I know you.”

 

“Another you.”

“I did conceal the true nature of my relationship with the other Jim Kirk. I did not know for certain whether the same feelings would develop...you were such different persons, in divergent situations. I knew only that in any possible universe, my relationship with you would be the most important of my life, regardless of the nature of that relationship. Your first officer was annoyed with me because though I spoken of my friendship with the other Kirk, I spoke only of our friendship. Your Spock confinded in me, that originally, he felt only platonic friendship for you. But by the time he approached me...”

 

“He had loved you for years, Jim.”

 

“Have I errored in telling you this, now?”

“No.”

The whisper shocked Jim in its calm. “Thank you...I mean it's done, and regrets get you nowhere..I learned my lesson about dwelling the past.. “

He tried to laugh, but it came out a dry, strangled sob.

“And I got a lecture about living once,” a lopsided smile stretched across his face “from this Vulcan I used to know. I guess I'm trying to say is I'm glad to know. Truth's a rare and beautiful thing wherever you can find it,” he laughed with an ache that rose from the deepest corners of his lungs. “Thank you for telling me.”

He paused, wondering if he really wanted to know the answer to the next question.

“...do you think he knew...how I felt?”

“If you are half as transparent and endearingly, frustratingly oblivious as my own Jim Kirk...I cannot see how he would not.”

Jim smiled wistfully at that.

Neither Jim nor the other Spock spoke for a long time. Side by side, they watched the too-pale skies of New Vulcan purple in dusk, the single sun of the reclaimed world dip below the horizon line. The few days of shore leave had left Jim's head feeling solid and his heart, though sore, bursting with life. He could see stars in black and white struggling to blaze through the smoke-stain clouds and knew, within hours, they would grow fiercer in the rising dark. And there would be other worlds to discover, other stars on which to land. There was, Jim realized, a painful sort of struggle he had been enveleloped in since he was born. Still standing here now with this Vulcan who had seen so many things, he could not shake the feeling that all he was, had been, and would ever be was present in him in that moment, that nothing was ever truly lost. At least, in him that moment.

And a moment is all that he could ever ask for.

A planteary blue had settled over the desert when the Other Spock next spoke.

“What lies before you now?”

“Life.”

Spock's eyebrow twitched, amused. Jim's heart ached. Someday, he realized, that twitch would spark in him warm affection. Now, it was too raw, too close...but someday. Someday.

“What? You, of all people, should appreciate that answer. Nah, tonight is my last night on shore leave. Bones said in his medical report that I needed a few days off to deal with the stress, spend some time with some cool, chill Vulcans. I go back to my ship tomorrow.”

“Are you ready?”

“I'll make myself ready.”

They rose to their feet as if on cue. For a long moment that would never be long enough, the two men stared into one another's faces; gazes tracing ghosts of the other each once knew.

“Maybe in another life, yeah?” Jim managed a watery half-smile. The Other Spock nodded swiftly. Turning sharp on his heel, Jim strutted back towards Sarek's house. He found himself abrim with the strangest feeling, as though he'd like to run the way he had as a boy in Iowa; defiant and free, horizon-bound to never break for canyons...

“Jim.”

He halted.

“Don't look back.”

 

 

FIN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acknolewdegements:
> 
> *I feel like I need to mention littebirdtoldme's fic “Within Reach” because it was part of the inspiration for this fic. Her story is TOTALLY different than mine other than the fact that Spock “dies”, and Jim has a hard time dealing...but hers has a happy ending. I totally recommend it if I just made you feel all depressed and you need cheering up/a fic with hugging and kissing and sex at the end(you can find it on livejournal...check out my rec page, it's there.) I loved her fic, but I started thinking to myself “Hmmm, what would have happened if Jim didn't get his Spock back...”
> 
> *The other inspirations for this story were Joy Division (especially “Heart and Soul”), the Orpheus and Eurydice myth (duh) and lots and lots of existientalism (especially Sartre, Camus, and I guess Heigdegger and Kaftka.)
> 
> *A huge thanks to argusblack (on LJ) for the telepathy science sounding legit in chapter 2 (on the livejournal version, I have yet to update the ksarchive.com one...the livejournal versions of my fics are ALWAYS so much more polished than the ksarchive ones...haha..)
> 
> *I leave it entirely up to you to decide whether or not Spock was really killed by Roltz and the Minister was dealing to his own people, or whether or not that was all a figment of Jim's subconscious. My personal belief is that the Prime Minister WAS the dealer, but Spock's death was a random, fluke thing by an unskilled would-be revolutionary, and that Jim's subconscious was trying to superimpose meaning on something horrible which happened for absolutely no reason. However, I am a firm believer that an author's opinion about a work is no more (and in some cases, less) valid than the reader's (yay postmodernism! Michel Foucault FTW!), so whatever you want to believe is fine with me:) *People I quoted: the movie (duh), Ovid, Soren Kierkegaard gets heavily paraphrased (the leap of faith/shout-out-to “Fear and Trembling”), T.S. Eliot's “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Harry Potter, and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" (twice.)and i realized later there are at least two shoutouts to Plato I wasn't even thinking about when writing...probably more shoutouts I'm not even remembering now
> 
>  
> 
> Most important of all:
> 
> * This fic is dedicated to a certain few of my best friends, the toughest people I've ever met, who have endured more than I think I could. They won't ever read this because they are way too cool to read fanfiction and too busy being BAMFs and teaching me to keep my chin up in our darkest hours, but I want to shout out to them anyway. Love you forever. You inspire me to cling to a sense of urgency and hope more than you will ever know. This one goes out to all of you:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCfE1--TCD8


End file.
